chapter 131
Getting away from Lola wasn’t as easy as I wanted it to be. She wanted to claim that she could continue healing and damaging me while I was absorbing the skill, as I was good enough for that, but I really didn't want the distraction. So, I had to put my foot down and order her to do other things.
Yet I was stalling, not sure which of my affinity I wanted to use. My basic affinity, although there were only a few slots left, would give me the most versatility and should give me the most space, although that was not certain.
My mind affinity would give me more flexibility but less space, and probably would make it so that I couldn’t store as many things as I could with my basic affinity.
My mechanist affinity was the most unknown. There were no records of what it would do, although similar affinities seemed to have the limitations of only being able to store technological things. The size of the space was also generally smaller, although not always, if compared to the basic affinity.
I did have my 6th sense, but it was really hard to use it in this context. It was magnificent at notifying me if something I did was wrong or some danger was approaching, but no matter what I chose, it would be a positive outcome.
Still, I tried my best to hopefully make an informed decision. Each time I thought about using a certain affinity, it gave me a good feeling. If I really tried hard, there seemed to be some differences in this feeling, but I could not properly distinguish it. Perhaps in the future, when this skill is at a higher rank, it will be possible, but not right now.
There was a possibility I was getting too reliant on my skills. What were my own instincts telling me? The answer came almost immediately. Not a second later, the stone crumbled as I absorbed the skill.
It was a fickle yet concrete skill. A weird combination, but somewhat understandable. It had concrete laws it was going to be covered by, but otherwise it was quite flexible as it needed to be.
Quite fast, the skill settled down in the part of my core that was dominated by my mechanist affinity. Now I understand what this skill would do, at least to an extent. The storage seemed big and more like a traditional inventory instead of a space like Bob or FH has.
There were limitations; I could feel that, so I walked out and headed towards our storage areas. With a thought, the revolver that was strapped to my hip disappeared along with its holster, being stored in my inventory like data. I could also pull it out easily enough and have it be in the exact same position as it was before.
Could I change that? And a moment later, yes I could, calling it into my hand. Curiously enough, I could separate the two items, leaving the holster in my inventory while only taking out the gun. That shouldn't be possible—pretty sure that wasn't how inventory should work.
Quickly I went over to what FH had gathered in regards to the skill. Yes, that should not have been possible. A moment later, only bullets appeared in my hand, and then the revolver in my other hand, now without any bullets loaded.
For a moment, I stopped moving, concentrating a bit more on the revolver. Now that it was in my storage, I could feel the different parts of it. Could I really do it? With fast steps, I moved to the nearest counter. A moment later, a completely disassembled revolver, with every part separated, appeared, and a large chunk of my mana disappeared.
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So there was a cost to this disassembly. Could I also assemble things? A few tries later, the answer was a resounding no. With practised ease, I assembled all the parts of the revolver, then made it disappear into my inventory again.
What I couldn’t do was break down the different parts; it needed to be an individual part, but even screws and everything else could be separated. This seemed like it would come in handy.
“Captain, can we continue?” I could barely keep myself from jumping as Lola somehow appeared behind me. I need better sensors or some skill to help me with that.
“Yes, you can continue,” I said in a defeated tone. While absorbing a skill, I did want complete focus; now that it was time to test the skill, well, she could continue poking as I really did want my resistance skills ranked up.
As I continued to test, she continued to damage me in different ways, then healed me afterwards.
The healing she did didn't take the pain away, and it wasn't comfortable in any way. It seems like in every story, healing magic is something wonderful and makes you feel good; the reality shattered that expectation.
It was confirmed that I couldn’t, for example, store wooden items. That was really unfortunate. Although that wasn't strictly true. Concentrating, I guided my basic affinity through the inventory skill.
Doing this took literally minutes, but I did manage to make a single piece of wood disappear into my inventory, and unfortunately to take it out I needed to do the same thing, but it did keep it stored. Although it was going to be a long process whenever I wanted to do that.
The same thing happened when I guided my mind affinity through the skill; it took literal minutes to achieve, but I could make something from a distance disappear. If it's technological, I could just pull it out without any problem.
Everything else was as close to expected, and the space inside seemed quite bigger as I could store nearly 100 cubic metres of materials. That was good not just because of the large volume, but because I could store base metals easily enough, the only limitation was the higher mana cost. It was nice that not only technological things but metals as well counted towards what I could store.
Overall, I was pleased. In extreme cases, I could still store basically anything; I just needed time, and the storage was approximately two times better than it would have been with my basic affinity, which was truly unexpected.
During all of this Lola had not stopped poking me, so I did get a rank up to my light resistance skill. That was quite good, but we still had so many other skills that we needed to rank up.
Now that my storage was once again empty and my mana somewhat restored, it was time to start storing things that I would actually want to take with me. On top of that list was my nano machine armour.
This armour was quite excellent. I had a decent chunk of it inside and on my body. The need for me to have my bonds filled up to the limit also meant that quite a lot of it was just stored on the ship.
Without my skill Hardened Connection this armour would be quite bad, but with it, it was quite comparable to the other armour we could make. Its upside was that I could make it into any shape I wanted, and with better base materials I could keep up with any other armour we could make.
Up to this point, storage had been the biggest problem, but now I could keep as much as I could make inside my inventory and pull it out whenever I needed.
When everything was stored, the next thing to store was some ammunition and perhaps some backup power supplies. At that, I received a report from Dean.
“Captain, the first mineshafts are finished. We are starting the extraction of ore. Bob managed to finish the first processing area, and as requested, we started with iron.”
“Excellent news, I will be right there to inspect everything.”
The storage drones didn't need to be anything special, so just using steel was good enough. With them we could store a lot more ammunition for the battles ahead and, of course, everything else we needed as well.
As I was walking outside, I realised that the bonded nano machine clusters that made up my armour, which were inside my inventory, still reported me their status. Curious part was that they now reported no environment around them and complete blackness.
That should not be possible. Inside the inventory, everything was stored at the exact state they were in; they should not be able to send any data to me or be able to understand their environment.
“There’s no way.” Rushing ahead, leaving Lola behind, frozen as she was, so shocked by my sudden action.
Quickly I pulled out one of our bigger power cells. Opening a port on my left side, I jammed the power cell connection into the port, feeling the surge of power. This was for emergencies, and if I needed some more power, but there’s no way this would work.
A moment later, I made the power cell disappear, and the cable went with it. Yet this didn’t cut off the power supply. Technology would still work if it were inside my storage.
“Lola, it’s still supplying me power.”
She stood there for a moment, not knowing what to say, before she whispered out, “That’s way too overpowered.”
She was correct in that. Wait, could I halt the power supply? It took me a bit of time, but finally the power supply froze, suspended in storage as it originally should have been. My mind raced once again, thinking of all the opportunities now available to me.
It was a nice day to be me.